November 16, 20223 yr Anvil, please read your forearm is parallel to the ground and your daily driver hammer face is parallel to the ground/anvil face again. No matter what height you come up with, put a piece of soft wood on the anvil face and hit it with your hammer. A crescent at 12 o'clock means the anvil face is too low, a crescent at 6 o'clock means the anvil face is too high. Adjust as needed so the hammer face makes a full impression.
November 16, 20223 yr 3 hours ago, anvil said: the best height for an anvil stand is when your forearm is parallel to the ground and your daily driver hammer face is parallel to the ground/anvil face. That doesn't sound right; that would mean that your forearm is parallel to the anvil face at the bottom of each hammer blow. At the same time, you wouldn't want the forearm to be perpendicular to the anvil either. I suspect the ideal angle would be such that the hammer face is parallel to the anvil face and the wrist finishes the down-stroke in a neutral position -- that is to say, with no excess abduction, adduction, flexion, or extension.
November 17, 20223 yr I just deleted my response because I was really off base. Thanks for the headsup Glenn and JHCC. Lol, stuff happens.
November 17, 20223 yr No worries. Sometimes messing up helps us think things through to a better answer -- that's my story anyway, and I'm sticking to it!
November 18, 20223 yr Lol, yup and when I do, they are a real doozie! At least I got a good laugh over it. Hey, sometimes if I couldn't laugh at my mistakes, there would be nothing to laugh at!
November 18, 20223 yr "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?" -- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
November 18, 20223 yr Like last night when I tried to call ThomasPowers and got some other totally different Thomas Powers who had NOT gone to the hospital? Yeah, that was fun.
November 18, 20223 yr Oh PLEASE tell me you thought he was having memory issues and tried convincing him he really IS in ICU and something like 50k people were praying for his speedy recovery! Maybe insisted he put Jo Anne on so she could help straighten out his confusion? Thomas would LOVE that story! Frosty The Lucky.
November 18, 20223 yr Bummer. I LOVE a good wrong number, coming or going. All telephone solicitations are wrong numbers and fair game in my book. I've gotten a few of those good too. <snicker> I'd be looking up "other" Thomas Powers online if I were into pranking people I don't know but doing it deliberately isn't the same thing. Frosty The Lucky.
December 20, 20223 yr My wife has been telling me that I'm not myself lately. Very annoying after a while....
December 20, 20223 yr Heck, I've always thought of yourself as "Other" and only occasionally annoying. . . to me. I'd think she'd appreciate a little variety. Frosty The Lucky.
December 30, 20223 yr Author Here's the semi-finished stand, with anvil attached. Some of the material I had planned to use was taken by a job - gotta pay the bills before playtime - so the 17 x 2 round went on the bottom and a 12 x 18 x 7/8 rectangular plate became the top. I haven't welded on any hammer rings yet, I want to put some miles on the anvil before I start adding things The anvil is held by four toe clamps which seem to do a very good job. I haven't detected any movement, though I haven't used it more than about an hour or so. The wood pallet underneath is a temporary thing, mostly because I don't want to go outside to fetch any wood for making the actual wood blocks, and of course its not anchored to the floor yet. The only thing I'm not happy about it that there's a slight ring, more like a reverberation, from the round pipe. I burned a hole near the top on the back side to pour in sand if needed and I think I'll take that option to deaden the vibration (yes, I made a sheet metal cover to screw on over the opening and seal it off.) The sand will wait until its in place and anchored to the floor though, in the mean time a little extra sound isn't going to kill me.
December 30, 20223 yr Try felt pads under the anvil's feet. Bolting it to the floor should help deaden the ring too. Frosty The Lucky.
January 27, 20233 yr Author Here's a little update on how my anvil stand is progressing... I found a piece of 4140 to make an upsetting block. Its only 3.75" dia. so I put it up on the same deck as the anvil rather than down on the base. I'll still probably add the lower block at some point. The upper bock is held down with toe clamps made from angle iron (just like the anvil). Note that I haven't sent it out to get hardened yet. I'm waiting to get a couple other things to get hardened so I'm not paying the minimum batch price over and over. The block is round so if the top surface ever gets too rough, I can just unclamp it, put it in the lathe and face it and it'll be like new again (but a couple thousandths smaller, of course!) Next up: loops for hammers etc, which I was going to put all along the front face of the top deck (far side from this picture). But I've been throwing my tongs and chisels under the anvil between the legs, which is pretty convenient, so I'm only going to put loops on either side. That way I have hammer stowage to the left and right, maybe two on either side, but I can still throw tools between the legs. As a side note, below the block on the column, you can see the window I cut in the pipe to add sand later down the road, but I'm planning to send the stand over to the grinders to get the top deck blanchard ground nice and flat. After it gets back the sand will go in.
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.